The petroleum industry uses hydraulic fracturing to increase rock permeability thereby increasing the flow of oil to producing wells. More than 75% of US oil wells are hydraulically fractured. Internationally, the fraction is closer to 20% but some expect this to increase to 75% in the next few decades.
The operators need to know as much as possible about the induced fracture, including its orientation, length, whether it extends symmetrically from the borehole, its vertical extent, whether it traverses the producing horizons. Presently there are two technologies for doing this: 1) Make geodetic measurements of ground deformation caused by the fracture, either at the surface of the earth, or “down hole” using borehole instruments. This is most commonly done using sensitive tilt meters, although other methods may be used. 2) Record micro-earthquake seismicity that accompany the growth of the fracture. As the fracture propagates it causes breakage of the rock and these can be recorded using standard seismological techniques. The seismometers may be placed in boreholes to reduce surface noise to improve the sensitivity to the extremely small quakes caused by the fracturing.
Among the various prior art approaches, some have considered combining ground deformation and seismic information. Unfortunately, the prior art does not provide a mechanically consistent or integrated approach for using deformation data in conjunction with the seismicity to achieve effective and efficient fracture imaging. In particular, it would be a key advance in the art to provide improved methods to determine characteristics of human created hydraulic fractures in the field of natural resource mining, such as petroleum extraction.